Tulsa city council to consider new ethics rules and a pay hike for city employees

The Tulsa City Council is scheduled to vote on a new set of <b><a class="headlinelink" href="http://www.kotv.com/main/home/searchKOTV.asp?mainSearch=ethics rules">ethics rules</a></b> and a pay raise for

Thursday, June 23rd 2005, 6:21 am

By: News On 6

The Tulsa City Council is scheduled to vote on a new set of ethics rules and a pay raise for city workers at its meeting this evening. Both issues were worked on for several weeks before the city council agreed to a vote.

6 in the Morning reporter Omar Villafranca says the Tulsa City Council delayed the vote for a new set of ethics rules last week, after a heated debate. The new ethics rules took eight months to write and the council planned to vote on a policy to eliminate conflicts of interest. But city attorney Alan Jackere pointed out the language in the rules wouldn't stand up to a challenge in court and that upset several councilors.

Even though all parties involved want to pass the ethics guidelines, they agreed to wait one week to clean up the language before they vote on the rules.

The Tulsa city council also plans to vote on a pay increase for city workers, but the city and the employee's union had different ideas on the increase.

Employees were hoping for a 7 percent increase in pay. The mayor is only recommending a 3.5 percent bump.